Whether you are in a small, medium or large business, you’d do well with a marketing strategy. Companies that want to excel in today’s competitive economy require not just any marketing strategy but the best they can find, whether in-house, customized or out-sourced.

There are many types of strategies to promote your company products or services. There are simple or sophisticated strategies which have been proven, and can be easily applied to most organizations.

Campaigns are different from strategies; a marketing strategy is an approach to market or promote the business products or services to confirm transactions that will keep the company viable. It can also be called a plan which is used to give the company an added advantage or project a more attractive image to its intended buyers of its products or services.

Purpose of Marketing Strategy
A strategy must bring in the sales when implemented; otherwise, it is a failed strategy. Time, effort and money are wasted which are considered losses to the company. Different strategies are employed not only for the different products and services of the company, but also target at different market segment or users. Hence, it is important to identify what the focus of your strategy is.

Marketing strategies Media
Some marketing strategies include print campaigns like advertisements in the newspaper or billboards. These are meant to instill awareness of the company’s products and services to a larger audience. Nowadays, the Internet provides a most conducive platform as part of the company’s strategies. Some companies may choose the television or radio media to execute their strategies if they are focusing on certain types of audience for their goods and services. For example, companies which manufacture household products may choose to market their products through the television medium as a commercial which targets housewives.

Factors involved in Marketing Strategies
Whichever strategy you may choose for your company’s products or services, you will need to consider the item to be promoted, the targeted audience or buyer, the duration of the strategy, the budget and the expected results. At times the company may be able to use a strategy for several of its products and services while at other times, not.

There must be a specific audience identified to that chosen item to be promoted so that, that specific category of buyers will be tuned in on the promotion. A marketing strategy cannot go on and on as the target audience may feel bored with it or develop negative feelings or opinions about the company’s status.

There must be a budget to work on a specific strategy for a specific product or service identified for promotion as there may be other products and services which will demand the same attention and priority for good sales. A specific budget is also necessary to ensure that the strategy does not exceed the expected expenses to promote the identified product as the bottom line is to recoup these expenses and more.

Hence, the most important aspect of a marketing strategy is the expected results. The strategy employed should bring in more revenue to the company which covers the expenses expended on that particular product or service.

When it comes to share market investing, many traders are only familiar with the old “Buy and Hold”‘ strategy. Little do they know that there are many Stock Market Strategies that can be easily learnt, that can increase their probability of success in the share market.

Whether you are an investor or a speculator of the share market, below are some handy stock market strategies that can improve your overall performance.

Market Timing Strategies

Timing the share market is a strategy that’s purpose is to identify ideal times to invest money in the share market, to buy stock and when to sell. It is true that if the overall share market is strongly trending, that your probability of successfully investing your capital in a stock which is also strongly trend is much greater.

By investing your money in the share market during conducive market conditions and preserving your capital when the market conditions are not, it stands to reason that you can side step some costly trading losses and greatly increase your overall profits.

Stock Option Strategies

One way that a stock trader can either increase or decrease the leverage and risk in his/her trading investments, is to use Stock Option Strategies. One misconception of options is that they are a risky investment because of the leverage they can provide. But the truth is stock options were originally created to remove some of the risk involve in holding stock, and if used correct, they certainly do provide that.

A trader can choose from a range of option combinations, or stock and option combinations, for a range of desired effects. Depending on which option strategy chosen, a trader has the ability profit when the asset rises in value, remains the same or declines in value. There are also stock option strategies to protected the value of your stock assets.

Stock Market Investment Strategies

There are many stock market investment strategies that a trader can use to both take advantage of conducive market conditions, and also to preserve investment capital. Some of the more common strategies are:

For many B2B marketers, the traditional marketing funnel that motivates prospects to self-identify and then move to a sales funnel, is ingrained in our minds. However, in the Age of the Customer, Forrester Research’s phrase for a customer-driven marketing landscape, the funnel has evolved to reflect a new customer expectation requiring sales and marketing to work in tandem.

With this in mind, B2B marketers must evaluate how their current B2B marketing strategy is aligned with the psychology of their buyer journey. In other words, B2B marketers must know how to craft a marketing strategy based on the predominance of the customer.

So, we have outlined a series of steps to follow when crafting a customer-centric B2B marketing strategy. Ask yourself and your team, “have we checked the following boxes when crafting our B2B marketing strategy?”

IDENTIFY TARGET PERSONAS IN YOUR B2B MARKETING STRATEGY

Going through the exercise to develop personas based on market and customer research is fundamental to understanding not only who is your audience but how to engage them in the buyer journey. Incorporating marketing personas makes websites two to five times more effective and easier to use by targeted users. However, only 44% of B2B marketers use buyer personas. So, ensure your B2B marketing strategy includes persona-based experiences that moves buyers forward in their journey with your brand.

Building out your influencer and decision personas to understand your target audience is only part of the process of laying a customer-centric foundation for your strategy. Next is to map the touch points of your buyer journey through all buyer stages. In order to close the loop from awareness to revenue it’s critical to know the touch points along the journey that are motivators and detractors in order to influence all parts of the customer experience. When developing your B2B marketing strategy answer the following, “How do I craft a strategy with the framework that aligns with your customer’s journey to gain clarity and define priority?”

DEFINE AND MEASURE B2B MARKETING STRATEGY GOALS & METRICS

Perhaps a no-brainer for a data-driven B2B marketer is clearly-defined metrics for success. With a heightened emphasis on personalization and customer experience (CX), B2B marketing goals and metrics must be established to measure the success of the marketing efforts supporting a customer’s progression through the buyer journey. Your B2B marketing strategy must outline how it will create direct contribution to revenue with a return and fuel high growth.

A recent case study example from one of our technology platform and services clients is Viewpointe, a leading private cloud managed services provider. Viewpointe was challenged with continuing to engage customers over the course of a 6+ month sales cycle. After clearly defining their B2B marketing goals, they aligned their content marketing plan with their persona-based customer journey. As a result, Viewpointe stayed engaged with their customers throughout the buyer journey and closed more deals. One way Viewpointe measured customer engagement lift was a 52% increase in persona aligned website content and 164% increase in blog content engagement from organic search referrals.

Referring back to our earlier customer funnel illustration, the traditional hand-off from marketing to sales, with no feedback loop when a lead is “flipped over the fence to sales”, causing misalignment between B2B marketing and sales teams. In fact, 25% of B2B marketers have no idea what is their customer conversion rate. In the Age of the Customer, your marketing strategy should outline how to rip out the proverbial fence and instead encourage inter-team collaboration. Ensuring this marketing and sales alignment is crucial to creating a consistent customer experience along a buyer’s journey. Being intentional about sharing insights between teams is one way to encourage broad acceptance of a successful B2B marketing strategy execution.

YOUR NEXT STEP

With only 45% of B2B marketers confident that they have decent, if not high, levels of customer centricity, the time to is now to author your new B2B marketing strategy that elevates you above your competition.